Follow The Election Money? If Only We Could

One of the must-reads of this week was an interview, on the often interesting Waterbury Observer blog, with a juror in the trial of John G. Rowland.

The juror, Bob McCormack, was a high school classmate of Rowland. He went into the trial thinking the charges against the ex-governor didn't amount to much. Then he changed his mind. "We were the victims," McCormack told the Observer. "John Rowland tried to take away our right to know. If you take voting seriously, that means something."

By "right to know," McCormack meant our right to know where all the campaign dollars come from and where they go. He meant our right to know what kind of donors, expecting what kind of favors down the road, are shoving cash at what candidate.

It's a great question, and I would argue that, if we don't have real answers, our government is broken and will stay broken.

Quick example: Last week, I got interested in drug-resistant bacteria. And by the way, fretting about Ebola while ignoring drug-resistant superbugs is like driving 70 mph with your eyes closed and worrying you'll die from a vampire bite. The superbugs are here and killing lots of people.

There's scientific evidence that antibiotics given to livestock and poultry play a role in the evolution of drug-resistant organisms. By one reckoning, 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on healthy farm animals — which creates a huge playing field on which germs can learn to shake off chemical tacklers.

Back in the 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration made a series of attempts to regulate this and got nowhere. And by nowhere, I mean that, even today, farm companies aren't even required to report to anybody which antibiotics they give to their animals or in what doses.

That's just common sense, right? We should know the drugs given to the chickens we eat. But agribusiness has always been able to beat back controls the way every well-heeled industry in America does: by renting key legislators. The methods are campaign money and lobbyists who remind them who their friends are.

That's just one example of the hundreds of desperately important issues more likely to be decided in favor of wealthy contributors than average voters. In the early years of this century, we saw a spirited bipartisan movement to address that problem and then saw it crushed under the heel of the U.S. Supreme Court in the woeful Citizens United decision.

In 2010, Citizens United was often simplistically portrayed as a Republican victory, but you have only to look at Connecticut to see what really happened when the court said "anything goes." Our little state, with its brave effort to construct an election system that would be cleaner than the one Rowland exploited the first time around, has watched the political machines and their special interest friends shred just about every reform.

The partisan sides are not all that clear. One of the heroes of 2005 was Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who seemed genuinely disgusted by the Rowland scandals and therefore convinced that lobbyists, contractors and political action committees ought to keep their grubby mitts off our elections. And here in 2014, you'd have to give a slight edge to Dan Malloy and the Democratic Party in the race to see who can smash more of the fine china of all that reform.

But both parties are bellying up to the trough with expansive appetites and disabled consciences. Money, by the millions, is sluicing into the campaign through Super PACS, state party accounts and governors associations. It's impossible to keep track of, despite the heroic efforts of the Connecticut Mirror, the State Elections Enforcement Commission and Common Cause. Malloy may not win because he has so much money, but he certainly won't lose because he doesn't have enough.

God rest ye, Bob McCormack. You are absolutely right that we the people have a right to know how all the money comes and goes in our elections. But when Rowland gets sent away in January, we'll be swearing in some governor, and there isn't one chance in hell that he agrees with you.

Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5) and blogs at courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe. He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.